oh that's interesting. My temperature drops to the point where aquascaping is a pain because the water's really cold.
Water Change followed by Dead Fish
- Thread starter The Masked Shadow
- Start date
This is the thing I see as most problematic.
It is possible you killed off a majority of the beneficial bacteria in your system creating a temporary ammonia spike.
There are lots of other things with a large water change, (temp, water parameter changes like a drastic pH change) that could contribute along with this, but.....
when I see thorough cleaning of substrate and surfaces, I immediately think ammonia poisoning.
If you hadn't changed water regularly, pH may have dropped, then adding 90% new water (which may have been higher in pH) .
Higher pH make ammonia more toxic, and compromising the beneficial (ammonia consuming) bacteria, together with radical cleaning sets up an ammonia spike.
definitely rules out the prime as that was no way too much for a 55g i use way more than that while doing wcs for the 40g but if you have this laying around unused in the medicine cabinet i have a bunch of those i ordered to help me be more precise in my measurements lol
yeah I use 2 or 3 times the recommended amount lol.
FYI - water conditioners such as Prime, are reducing agents, and once they have reduced all available chlorine and/or ammonia the latter (ammonia) which is typically only a by-product of chloramine, it then reduces oxygen. I have seen entire tanks wiped out due to someone using too much Prime/Safe. Not a common thing, but it can & does happen - which is precisely why Seachem recommends not overdosing. IME most hobbyists don't even know what their disinfection rate is, let alone whether it is chlorine, or chloramine.
